"Wandering Stars traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Industrial School for Indians through to the shattering aftermath of Orvil Redfeather's shooting in There There"-- - (Baker & Taylor)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

"For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you.” —Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts. - (Random House, Inc.)

TOMMY ORANGE is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His first book, There There, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. He lives in Oakland, California. - (Random House, Inc.)

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Orange's second novel is both prequel and sequel to the striking There, There (2018) and a centuries-spanning novel that stands firmly on its own. Once again featuring several narrator-characters, it opens during America's longest war—the 313 years of settlers' brutal attempts to annihilate the Native people who preceded them. The boy who will become Jude Star wakes to the sound of his camp's massacre, and escapes. In 1875, he's taken from Oklahoma to a prison-castle on the Florida coast; his jailer will one day teach his son at the Carlisle Indian School. We continue to meet Jude's inheritors (the provided family tree is key) and then it is 2018, and Jude's teenage great-great-great grandson Orvil is recovering from the climactic events of There There. Orvil's wicked pain, and increasing need for medication to numb it, lead to Sean, recuperating from injury himself, who has access to homemade painkillers. Orvil's grandmothers and brothers have struggles of their own. All this barely scratches the surface of Orange's tender yet eviscerating history of a family's survival—day to day, generation to generation—and their uneasy yet persistent belief in that survival. Their story, one character realizes, has to be lived in order to be told, it is the song being sung, the dancer in midair, and, indeed, there is so much life in this mesmerizing, kaleidoscopic novel.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: There, There was a lauded best-seller and readers will be thrilled to see anything from Orange, especially a continuation of that beloved story. Copyright 2024 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

Star, a young survivor of 1864's Sand Creek Massacre (in present-day Colorado), is held at the Fort Marion Prison Castle and compelled to eschew his language and heritage by a brutal prison guard—as is Star's son Charles a generation later, at the Carlisle Industrial School for Indians. Charles survives with the help of fellow student Opal Viola, whose own story brings us to 2018 Oakland and events in Orange's Pulitzer Prize finalist, mega-award-winning There There. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Library Journal Reviews

This follow-up to Orange's debut novel, There There, delivers a considerably different reading experience than its progenitor. Moving away from that earlier novel's vast, intricately woven tapestry of interconnections, Orange narrows his focus to the lineage and immediate family of There There's Orvil Red Feather, beginning with his great-great-great-grandfather in the 1800s and continuing until 2018, where most of the narrative takes place, examining the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. But it isn't just the novel's construction that changes shape. Orange forgoes the explosive tragedy that punctuated his first novel and instead documents its lingering distension. It's a potent and intimate pivot, one that builds in power as he mines the abiding grief of childhood's passage, particularly within the contexts of Indigenous history and contemporaneity. This second work lacks the sense of sprawl that invigorated Orange's debut, and there are stretches in the central section that can feel pulled too thin and blunted by repetition, leaving its three parts a bit wobbly in balance. But, as was the case with There There, he builds to a memorable crescendo. VERDICT Orange smartly avoids the trap of attempting the same trick twice, tweaking his approach to story and structure and once again showcasing his ability to deliver characters with clear, complex interiority.—Luke Gorham